


wild geese

by cateliot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Affairs, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Attacks, Discrimination, Divorce, F/M, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inhumans (Marvel), Jealousy, Partner Betrayal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Super Soldier Serum, What Happened in Bahrain, and we all fall down, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 22:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20365849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cateliot/pseuds/cateliot
Summary: Instead of “May, I’ve come to say goodbye” it was “Melinda…I need you”.  He never gave up on her; now it’s her turn to return the favor.“I can’t let him hurt anyone else."“If you’re going to come after him, Phil, then I’m going to stop you.”There was a clear threat in her words, and Melinda didn’t make her threats lightly.





	wild geese

> You do not have to be good.
> 
> You do not have to walk on your knees
> 
> for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
> 
> You only have to let the soft animal of your body
> 
> love what it loves.
> 
> Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
> 
> Meanwhile the world goes on.
> 
> _(“wild geese” by mary oliver)_

* * *

  1. **YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD—**

The first thing Andrew Garner was aware of when his eyes opened was light. It was bright and overwhelming, but warm like summer. 

When he opened them again, he became aware of more of his surroundings. The leather, black futon he was lying on, the fact that his clothes were clean and dry, and his busted-up ribs were wrapped snuggly in some kind of gauze. Sitting up with a groan, he found an IV threaded through his forearm and tapped down.

He ran his fingers up the IV line and contemplated pulling it out.

“Relax, it’s saline, not poison.”

His head jumped to the other side of the room where his ex-wife was leaned up against the makeshift table in the corner of the room. The light from the large windows reflected off the side of her face, making her skin light up like the moon. Her eyes were masked by shadows, but Andrew could feel her intense gaze on his face.

His hand came up the press against his face. His fingers met the smooth texture of medical tape; Melinda must have sutured the cut on his forehead.

“Where—"

His voice was cracked and harsh and he cleared his throat to try again. 

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere safe.”

They were in some sort of large loft with huge windows. The grey walls and decor were all industrial, modern and the entire room was sparsely populated. Other than a futon and the table next to Melinda, there wasn’t much else in the loft other than boxes near the foot of the table with one of Melinda’s go bags next to them.

He moved to try and stand up, but his vision swam and the feeling of the floor shifted out from under his feet. He panicked briefly before the feeling vanished irrationally into smoke. 

_Melinda was here._

** **

“Do you remember how you got here?” her voice was carefully measured.

“I…”

“Do you remember making the phone call?”

He remembered the alley and the pain. There had been dirt and gravel on the ground when he fell. He felt his busted-up ribs twinge painfully and the room grew hazy around the edges.

“Drew?”

The sound of his name from her lips seemed to calm his heart rate and the pain.

“I think so.”

The phone call had been short. Just after he had been beaten to a bloody pulp in an alleyway that he didn’t remember walking into. He remembered bleeding and heaving in broken air as he struggled to remain conscious. 

The phone had been in his back pocket and the screen had blood smeared on it when he dialed her number by memory. It was a miracle the number even still worked. She had answered on the second ring.

_“Drew?”_

_“M-Melinda? I’ve made a mistake…I-I need you.”_

** **

When he opened his eyes again, everything was darker. A fleece blanket was draped over his body and the IV had been taped off and removed with Melinda over near the computers and when he drew nearer, he could see rapid-fire Chinese script fluttering across the screen with a blinking map in the background.

“What it looking for?”

His voice was dry and it cracked halfway through the question. 

“Until a week ago, _you_. Now it’s keeping an eye on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s position and local law enforcement. By now, Coulson’s noticed that I’ve disappeared and will have probably traced your phone call.”

Her eyes still didn’t meet him. 

(What was she afraid of?)

“They’re coming after me.”

Melinda didn’t answer right away but turned to face him. She was so much smaller than he remembered her being in Hawaii.

“Yes.”

“But you’re here.”

Something in her gaze hardened. 

“Yes.”

** _x_ **

Later he ventured to one of the windows and looked out into the town below them, gorgeously isolated and desolate. There was no one for miles. It was like the city they were in was abandoned. 

Something inside his chest stung, raw and painful. 

If he were to turn out here…the only one Lash would kill would be Melinda, and she knew that when she picked the location for the safe house. 

Even later he heard her out in the empty hallway on the phone with a voice he recognized at Maria Hill’s. 

“—and I’m scared for you.”

He heard Melinda sighed heavily (with a little bit of annoyance in her tone). 

“_Maria_…”

“No, just listen to me, Mel,” the phone crackled, “you’re too close to this. You need to take a minute and step back and think about this situation. You’ve been compromised.”

He had always hated that word…_compromised_. Like every agent’s personal feelings towards a subject made them weak, made them worse at their jobs. He used to find it slung around on every other piece of paper given to him to try and suspend an agent on grounds for psychological review. And he was supposed to agree with the assessment because passion, because feelings (whether anger, rage, fear), because commitment had no place in the field.

“This is not up for discussion.”

The agent on the other end argued a little more before being cut off again. The end of the conversation was short before Andrew revealed himself. Melinda was sitting up against the wall, her head tilted back against the plastered wall.

“How much did you hear?” her voice was resigned and her eyes didn’t meet his face.

“Enough.”

Her hand brushed the hair out of her face and he recognized the motion from their marriage as her first sign of exhaustion. He sat down on the ground next to her, not close enough to touch, but close enough for her to feel the warmth from his body.

“What’s the plan?”

Her eyebrows contracted slightly. 

_God, did she have a plan?_

Melinda always had a plan.

“The ATCU was coming after me. They were sending some sort of op team to try and cross me off.”

“Helen Cho has been working on a stop-gap measure in one of her labs. The last time we were in contact, she said that they were close to completing it.”

“So, it could undo…Lash?”

Melinda suddenly couldn’t meet his eyes.

“That’s her current theory. She thinks that once it enters the bloodstream it will neutralize the ability to transform, reverse what the crystal did. It’ll still be there, but you won’t be able to access it.”

“So, we just have to get to Helen Cho’s lab in South Korea without getting shot by HYDRA, the ATCU, or S.H.I.E.L.D.?” he summarized with a dry laugh, “sounds like an easy plan.”

Her hand reached into her pocket and pulled out her SAT phone setting it on the ground between them. 

“Technically you have had an episode since England and we could argue you were using your…powers…to save Simmons.”

“What is he doesn’t listen?”

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”

Andrew didn’t have the energy to challenge her strange optimism. 

They moved to the computer and May pressed the first speed dial on the SAT phone. The phone rang twice before being answered.

“Where are you, May?” Coulson’s voice was rough and far away over the phone.

“You need to leave this alone, Phil.”

Andrew was standing at the table watching Melinda’s face go blank. It hurt more than he expected—that she felt she needed to hide herself in this moment—but he wasn’t surprised. Not after their conversation in the warehouse.

“Absolutely not! People are _dead_, May, we can’t ignore that—”

“Andrew has killed less people than I have,” she interrupted, her eyes fixed on the device in front of her. Something ugly flashed in her eyes and Andrew opened his mouth to interrupt before Coulson voiced the exact words he was planning to say.

“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“He’s killed less people than you or Bobbi or Clint or Hunter.”

Coulson’s voice was frustrated now.

“May, _come home_.”

“It’s not my home anymore.”

There was a deafening silence on the other end. He could hear multiple people breathing on the other end; their breath hitched and heavy. 

Coulson’s next words were sticky, shaky, and crusted over in an ugliness.

“I can’t let him hurt anyone else.”

“If you’re going to come after him, Phil, then I’m going to stop you.”

There was a clear threat in her words, and Melinda didn’t make her promises lightly.

** _x_ **

The speed and efficiency that she was packing up their table was impressive and he felt oddly childlike standing to the side watching her.

“You should go back to S.H.I.E.L.D., Melinda.” 

He didn’t know what made him say it. He had never felt so far from a Lash outburst than he was right now, with her.

Melinda had been previously focused on whatever flashing was brought up on the computer, but as soon as the words descended from his lips, she spun around with a speed that made her look like a blur. 

“Shut. Up.”

Andrew didn’t see Melinda angry very often. In their marriage of almost ten years, they hadn’t shared many fights, save the same big one, over and over again, but in this moment, her pupils were slits and anger rolled off her shoulders like fog unfolding in a storm.

“This is _your_ fault.” (That was a change since she normally thought everything was _her_ fault.) Her pitch had dropped a couple of notches. “If you had told me earlier, this wouldn’t be happening.”

He caught her wrists and her whole body froze. He watched her chest heave—it was a way for her to still her body, to keep herself from moving, a deer in front of a predator. (If he wasn’t sure that some part of her was frightened of him then she was now, and his heart broke all over again.)

“Okay, okay,” he said, his tone deep, soothing, “I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

** _x_ **

There were never meetings like this unless there was a crisis—everyone pushed into a too-small room. It was oddly reminiscent of a too-small plane with too-small beds. (Somehow May had gone from the fixer of all crises at S.H.I.E.L.D. to becoming the crisis.) 

Daisy was sitting around one of the tables with Lincoln, Mack, and the other. Hunter and Bobbi were propped up on the edges of the tables talking amongst themselves, giggling, while seeming to be in one of their _on_ periods. Some of the agents from May’s old team in the corners, quiet, still in their work out clothes. 

(No one seemed to comment on the missing features of the room.)

When there was almost no room left, the doors opened and Coulson strolled in with an armful of files. 

Behind him was Rosalind Price and her team.

They filed into the room, packing towards the front of the room, stacking manilla file folders on top of the tables, plugging in all their devices, and black military boxes.

Daisy’s hand picked up one of their tablets in front of her and her fingers scrolled slightly. A sour taste burned at the back of her throat as photos of May filled the white space.

“Why is May on this?"

All eyes narrowed on Coulson.

He awkwardly cleared his throat, hand tightening on his files, before, "May burned all her covers in house, logged out of all her ongoing mission files, and then went off the grid 120 hours ago. Sources tracked her to the last location where we had Lash before she disappeared. We have to consider the worst."

There was an outburst of protests.

"You’re putting out a burn notice on May. That’s why you called us," Bobbi's voice was sharp and immediately cut through all the noise around them.

“Melinda May is one of the greatest extraction experts across any agency. She much more of a threat to national security than one rouge inhuman,” the man standing to Price’s immediate right, Banks, supplied. 

“May isn’t a threat to national security,” Fitz interrupted incredulous, “she would never betray S.H.I.E.L.D. like that. Tell them.” He turned towards Coulson who had been sitting quietly at the head of the table.

He looked uncomfortably down at the file Price’s men had given him.

“Fitz…we have contingency plans for when agents go rogue for a reason.”

“May hasn’t gone rogue,” Bobbi snapped, “maybe she’s on break or needed some time off? Barton and Romanova went off-book all the time and you never sent the cleaners after them. How is she any different?”

“She’s only been gone for a few days, maybe this is just a misunderstanding!” Daisy pointed out.

“I admire your loyalty, Agent Morse, but we have multiple sources and visual evidence that Agent May is colluding with known violent Inhumans,” Price said before Coulson could answer.

“What evidence?” Fitz called out before Jemma put a hand on his arm cutting off his voice like a silencer.

There was a general grumbling and before anyone could answer the questions begin thrown out, Coulson’s phone rang out. 

“See that’s her, answer it and I’m sure she’ll clear it all up!” Daisy shouted, nodding to Coulson’s phone. The room fell silent as their boss answered the phone, putting it on speaker as Rosalind Price leaned forward.

“Where are you, May?”

“You need to leave this alone, Phil,” May sounded far away on the phone.

“Absolutely not! People are _dead_, May, we can’t ignore that—”

“Andrew has killed less people than I have,” she interrupted, and Coulson’s face flickered emotions so quickly that Daisy couldn’t keep up. 

Sad. Angry. Guilt. Frustrated.

“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“He’s killed less people than you or Bobbi or Clint or Hunter.”

Coulson’s voice was frustrated now.

“May, _come home_.”

“It’s not my home anymore.”

There was a deafening silence. Everyone in the too-small room, even Price’s people were silent. It seemed decades before Coulson found an answer. 

“I can’t let him hurt anyone else.”

May’s next words were quick and solid. Resolute.

“If you’re going to come after him, Phil, then I’m going to stop you.”

Then the SAT phone connection cut off and the silence was shorter before--"our teams will be working in conjunction with yours,” Price announced to the quiet room, “you all have your assignments and groups. We will be moving in for the time being until the mission has been resolved and the ATCU’s component has been completed.”

“I’m not going after May.” Bobbi’s voice didn’t waver. Hunter glanced between his ex-wife and his boss before folding his arms. 

“Yeah, me either.”

There was a grumbling consensus from around the table.

“We’re not going after May,” Coulson barked out, “we’re going after Lash.”

“He hasn’t killed anybody since England, so technically, sir, you’re going after Andrew.”

He looked tired. He hadn’t shaved in days and the circles under his eyes were like sunken craters. 

“We aren’t worried about just Lash at this point,” the man sitting next to Price said again, “bringing in Melinda May and Andrew Garner safety without incident, loss of life, or leaked information is the main objective.”

Again, there were protests.

“Look,” Coulson’s voice broke out loud above the noise, “May makes her own decisions. She gets to choose herself over S.H.I.E.L.D.”

_(Something about that sounded so wrong to Daisy. Almost too wrong that she couldn’t put her finger on what it was and who this version on Coulson was.)_

“You are the closest people to the targets,” Price called out to the group, “the FBI has given the go-ahead to the ATCU for the use of any means necessary to protect against the loss of information assists and violent inhuman threats. You don’t want your friends hurt, then you need to help us and do your job to the best of your abilities.”

“You have your assignments in your inboxes,” Coulson barked out, “you’re dismissed.”

The room was moving fast with activity—S.H.I.E.L.D. agents moving back towards their posts, ATCU agents setting up in the conference room. Coulson slid the large cardboard box he had brought in on the table over towards Price. It had red tape all over the edges but had no defining labels on the outside. 

“Miss Price, I’m glad you’re here. Here’s everything we have on Melinda May.”

Daisy stood just outside the door. She watched as Rosalind Price kissed Coulson on the cheek before gathering up her overly large black pleather bag and moving towards the doorknob.

* * *


End file.
